Starwood is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world, it owns, operates, franchises and manages hotels, resorts, and spas under its nine owned brands.

Challenge

Group Sales responsible for booking conferences and large room blocks

Shift away from site visits was difficult

Process was clunky and inefficient

The pressure is on to make the best first impression.

The Group Sales organization is responsible for attracting and closing event planning prospects who are interested in booking high-profile, multi-day conferences with substantial room blocks.

These bookings represent significant revenue for the hotel and a significant expenditure for the event planner. So it’s no surprise that the prospective event planners want to be able to see what the site looks like and get a feel for its style and quality as early in the process as possible. They need to be sure the site will be professional and stylish and support their efforts for a successful event.

In years past, site visits were the most common way for event planners to decide on where to host their event. These days, planners often cull down their options without ever stepping foot inside the hotel. Before they decide to engage in a serious discussion with Sales, prospective event planners can now access the information they need on line, and base their short list of possible venues on site descriptions, available services and most critically, of photos of the hotel and its meeting facilities.

“ClearSlide finally gave us a good way to show our meeting space site from our office. Live pitch eliminated the need for a site visit in order to close.”

Even though the site selection process can take months, fierce competition from boutique and other large hotel chains has made it crucial to visually present the most appealing site as quickly as possible.

The Group Sales team in Denver were getting frustrated trying to sell their site virtually without the benefit of a visit from the potential customer. “We would get really creative, trying to make the best looking, visual PowerPoint possible, without being able to add video, or high res photos, which didn’t represent the beauty and quality of our space.” Brian Atchison, Assistant Director of Sales.

Cobbling together visuals and website links not only proved a clunky visual experience for the customer, but Brian and his team found they were wasting valuable time in trial and error with PowerPoint file sizes, and were unable to gauge at what point in the long sales cycle, they should be following up with their customers. As a result, too many sales calls ended with no bookings.

“Our sellers are able to pull from a vast library of rich content at the click of a mouse. And it was easy to switch gears based on the concerns and questions of each prospect.”

Solution

Put a library of rich content at event planners’ fingertips with ClearSlide

During sales calls, Brian and his team began using ClearSlide to share rich photos, site maps and videos, instantly with prospective event planners. In some cases, they were able to completely eliminate the need for a site visit and jumped right to the contract process, because they were able to show in such clear detail the beauty and capacity of their downtown Denver site. “Because we are able to quickly navigate between presentations, we always have an answer at our fingertips, and we look like a very resourceful sales force.”

In addition to using the instant demo as a valuable sales tool, Brian’s team relies heavily on the slide-view analytics ClearSlide makes available. By watching the slide views and forwarding activity of their prospects, they know exactly what the prospect is interested in and when they are closer to making a decision on the event location.

ClearSlide allowed team to share rich photos, site maps and videos instantly

Analytics gave insights about what prospects were interested in

It’s a great way to show off our hotel from our rep’s desk. ClearSlide gives us the ability to host immediate virtual tours.

Result

Site visits may be down, but closing rates are up

The Group Sales team at the Denver Downtown Sheraton is always happy to host site visits for prospective event and meeting planners. But now Brian’s team can also successfully do business with prospects who prefer to narrow the field or even make their final choice virtually.

“I’d say our large group closing rate has probably increased by 15% since we started using ClearSlide.” Which equates to hundreds of thousands of dollars for the hotel every year.

By using the ClearSlide platform’s easy-to-use content management and sales engagement capabilities, sales team members are never left without a compelling visual representation of their property.

Why ClearSlide?

Get right to the show-and-tell. ClearSlide’s instant-on platform lets your reps pitch and demo product on the first connection. No need to schedule a future site visit with dial-ins or attachments. Get started with a Free Trial today!

Company

The Sheraton Denver Downtown, a premier conference and meeting space.

The Sheraton Denver Downtown prides itself on providing a signature branded experience that not only lives up to, but also exceeds its customers’ expectations. This dedication to the highest levels of service and quality helps the hotel attract hundreds of multi-day conferences and high profile meetings each year.